


What's Real

by chii



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 18:37:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chii/pseuds/chii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wash remembers Texas as she was, as Allison, and isn't ever sure if the memories of her that he has from Project Freelancer are her, or Epsilon trying to hold onto what's gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's Real

**Author's Note:**

> part one takes place after part two, but that's the whole point; wash not being really sure if any of his memories of allison are real or just epsilon trying to fill in the blanks where he's missing her.

“She’s gone?”

Not the first time he’s heard those words, and certainly not the last. He’s not sure if the thought is comforting, or if it’s disconcerting, if it’s pathetic. Still, he has Wash right there, an ever-faithful little dog who sits when told and when asked to jump, asks _how high, sir?_

Except he doesn’t do as much of that right now, twitching at voices no one else hears, circles under his eyes from not sleeping. A pity. Church couldn't have expected everyone to take well to the AI integration, but David, at least, he'd had high hopes for.

“Indeed she is,” Church says, with far more evenness in his tone than he really expects to hear, leaning back in his chair, just looking out the window. There’s a still-smoking hole in the wall where she’d launched a grenade to escape and Wash— well, he hadn’t quite been at his best, all things considered. He had tried to help, but the doctor had sedated him, because they weren’t done fixing the damage he’d done to himself and his implantation slot.

“How could you do that?” Wash says a little more harshly, because he doesn’t understand, can’t understand, because it’s her. The Director’s reach extends far further than just a handful of people here or there, but the resulting chaos had been rather minimal, all things considered. A mass of chaos and then it was over, but why?

Pushing his glasses up his nose ( she hated hated hated when they slipped down and often adjusted them herself ) he just looks at the Freelancer, an eyebrow raised. “Are you suddenly under the impression that any of us could have held her back, rather than stopping her?”

Epsilon claws his way to the surface and Wash can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional, if the Director phrased it just like that just to watch him snap _crack_ **break** but he shoves Epsilon back down. They don’t know that he knows, they don’t know it was intentional, they don’t know –

_**( I told you you don’t get it he knows he knows he’ll hurt her he’ll hurt us we have to go like her we have to find her she’ll die she’s dead she’s hurt we have to help her- )** _

It takes everything to push Epsilon down, to silence him, to get him to quiet just enough to think over the screams and the echoes of pain he knows aren’t real, they’re just memory.

“No, sir, but we should have tried— she— she deserved better.”

He tries to shut it back but the words bring it all up again and Epsilon remembers, because that’s all he knows how to do, he remembers and brings it all back up and Wash sees her all over again, put down like a stray dog in the yard, a splash of red on black metal, pooling around her head. Epsilon thrashes, screams and beats at the inside of Wash’s mind until he collapses to his knees and presses his hands to his ears to get him to shut up, please please please just shut up—

 

He remembers her even when he wishes he could forget. 

“Jesus Christ, won’t you shut up?”

Wash jerks awake with a choked noise that bubbles up and nearly fights its way out, bitten off at the end as he swings out blindly and finds his arm grabbed, shoved back and an elbow at his throat, along with two too-green eyes just staring at him, red hair sliding out from where it’s tucked behind an ear. Wash blinks once, twice, three times, and then it's back to normal, black helmet, no face, no eyes, no hair.

( it’s her it’s her it’s her she’s dead but she’s right here she’s okay )

“What the hell is your problem?” Texas asks, just staring him down like he’ll spill all his secrets to her if she tries to stare hard enough, but she loses interest a few minutes in and just shoves him back into the couch he’d been sleeping on, and he has no doubt she's rolling her eyes.

Epsilon keeps having these dreams, these godawful dreams and every time he wakes up he’s not sure if it’s real or fake or anything else, really, because it makes Wash feel like he’s going crazy all on his own, every time he closes his eyes and hears Epsilon’s panicked whispers of conspiracies.

( the director is a good man )

( he’s not he’s not he’s not he’s going to kill us he’s going to hurt us )

“Hey.”

It takes everything not to respond like a soldier ( yes sir ) and he instead just sits up, breathing in. It was a memory leaking over, earlier, that had made it seem like she was wearing normal clothes, and that he had seen her face. The leaking happened more and more often, but it seemed like it was triggered by her more than anything else.

( stop that, epsilon, that's not her. please. )

“I’m fine. Sorry. I— didn’t mean to sleep there.”

It’s not the first time, though, nor will it be the last; it’s the only reason Texas settles back on the couch and starts working on her gun, casting him dubious looks through her helmet.

He gets a flash of red hair falling into her eyes, that look she always gives ( him ) when he’s being stupid, and he finds himself rubbing at his eyes and scooting away, swallowing hard.

“You gonna be okay if I just sit here?” he asks finally, the words coming out of his mouth but pushed there from Epsilon, quiet and insistent and banging around in the insides of his head, scraping nails and hands over it, making his ears ring and his stomach flip with pain, but it’s lessened, if she’s there. He doesn’t want to dig into the why, he just knows this helps, and if it calms Epsilon down, he’ll take it.

“It’s three in the morning, Washington. I doubt anyone else is gonna take that spot.”

Epsilon settles in his mind, latching onto the words she’s saying and how she says them, clinging to the familiarity of them. Once she’s quiet, though, he focuses on the sounds of her strip her gun and clean it, and Wash finds himself falling asleep all over again, curled on his end of the couch. He listens to her move just as much as Epsilon is, remembering a couch and an apartment and a coffee table that aren’t his, with her gun scattered over it, and him just watching her, envious just as much as he is proud and scared and everything else.

In the end, he's not sure if it ever even happened. If she'd ever talked to him past the idle conversations back and forth during a mission, or if this was real or just Epsilon's desperate clinging to a woman he could remember, barely.


End file.
